Okay, this is the sequel to the sequel of Book. The real sequel to Book refuses to cooperate and let me write it, so I went to work on the third installment instead. The ending demanded to be written - really. This is the first time I've written the ending of a story right off so I'm hoping it's not too obvious. But hey, it was fun! Now if I could just get Mitsuhiko to let me destroy life as he knows it, I'll be in business for installment number two...
It makes the second page of the metro section in the local newspaper. First column on the left, halfway down. Fire Claims Family of Four. A malfunctioning electrical socket is blamed for the fire that ravaged the Tsuburaya household last night around two am. Police report that a neighbor called in the blaze when he was awoken by the light from the flames. He then attempted to break into the dwelling, but the ferocity of the flames forced him back. Other locals called out to the inhabitants trapped inside, urging them to flee, but were unanswered. Firefighters rushed to the scene, but could do little except contain the flames. Unfortunately, there were no survivors. A funeral for the family will be held in three days time.
It's an everyday tragedy. Two grade school teachers, a third-grade girl and one first-grade boy gone in the wake of a malfunctioning electrical socket's inferno. Perished, burned alive. An unfortunate accident. Or so the newspapers would have one believe. If only it could be that simple.
The police reports told a similarly deceptive tale. The damaged socket was excavated from the ash. The bodies, what few bones that had survived the raging ferocity of the inferno, were matched up to the four deceased. A femur, three rib bones, a tooth, some minuscule skull fragments were all that was left in the fire's wake. Everything else had been reduced to ash. No evidence of foul play, no knowledge of anyone who would hold grudges against the family, no one who would gain from their deaths. It was sad, a tragedy yes, but not a homicide.
That's just how the Black Organization wanted it.
If Mitsuhiko hadn't shown up on Agasa's front porch that night battered and bruised in bloody Kamen Yaiba pajamas, she might have believed the lies as well. They might all have been deceived. Mitsuhiko gone, consumed in the blaze but for one tooth as his mortal remains. Yet there he'd been, teetering on the edge, a gunshot wound in his arm and sorrow in his eyes. She might have considered him a spector from a nightmare, if it wasn't for his voice.
Dead men tell no tales, but shell-shocked little boys have no such reservations.
Those next few hours were some of the longest in her life. Bandaging wounds, listening to his horror in a voice gone hollow. His eyes staring endlessly at the wall. How he'd asked, pleaded if he could stay for the night, he'd leave tomorrow but if he could please just have one night. The way he'd collapsed into exhaustion in her arms, asleep before he'd even closed his eyes. His trembling as he awoke to the nightmare. Sobbing as those empty eyes finally burst into tears. She never wanted to live through that again.
The following days were surreal in her mind. Calling Agasa home from his convention, explaining to him and Kudo what had really happened, hiding Mitsuhiko away from any prying eyes. How easy it was to convince Mitsuhiko into staying at Agasa's, confining him to the basement away from society to keep him safe. To keep them all safe. Having to keep a distraught Ayumi and Genta from wandering inside the house. Going to a funeral for a friend who was sleeping in the room adjacent to her lab. Watching said friend walk around the house in a daze, his eyes a constant red. She didn't want it to be real.
Too bad she never got what she wanted.
Then coming home one day from school, heading down to the lab to find her notebooks spread in a sea of disarray, with Mitsuhiko the eye of the hurricane. The confusion in his eyes as he asked her without words what it all meant. The terror racing through her veins at him finding the truth, at someone else knowing, someone who could betray. The hysterical laughter quelling within, wanting to break free as she realized he can't tell anyone, he's in the same boat. The realization that she'll have to speak. He's not saying a word, hasn't for weeks, but his eyes drown her in questions. Questions she doesn't understand, doesn't know how to answer. She's surprised to find her voice asking him what he's found, how far he's gotten. She's even more surprised to hear him give an answer. But a bubble of relief takes flight as over the next two hours, listening to his questions, herself giving answers, she finds curiosity chasing away the sorrow in his gaze. At least until he asks if he can help. Then that bubble promptly pops.
She stumbles upon Mitsuhiko and Agasa discussing the Black Organization and what knowledge she and Kudo have accumulated four days later. The enthusiasm and interest expressed in the two voices threatens to put a smile on her face - until they start discussing means of retaliation against the syndicate. To say she was not amused is an understatement. After an hour long dressing down, the two males seem desperate to sink beneath the floorboards. As well they should. One shouldn't count their chickens before they hatch. Though she'd never admit how glad she was to have Mitsuhiko acting like himself again.
Once Kudo found out Mitsuhiko knew everything, he refused to talk to her for a week. Never had she enjoyed a more peaceful week in her life. She just wished it could have lasted longer. Her muttered comments, which she thought she'd kept to herself, had Mitsuhiko cracking up. It was the first time he'd laughed since the tragedy. She couldn't stop herself from smiling. At least until she realized it was at her expense. She'd have to get him back...later. Right now she'd enjoy his chuckles.
He wanders into her lab more often after their initial chat, looking around, gazing upon all the equipment. She sees his hands just itching to touch, to poke and prod. To learn. He won't say anything aloud, but she knows he misses school, learning, books and knowledge. He's always been a smart kid, intelligent for his age, but the work here requires more knowledge than he possesses. Molecular Chemistry and Microbiology are not par for the course for most elementary school students. While he might be racing through the first, second, and third grade curriculum books Agasa has procured (there's really not much else to do around the house), this research is a bit too advanced. She tells him as such at the next opportunity. He nods, and wanders off with a calculating look upon his brow. She's not all that surprised the next day to find a Chemistry for Beginners book under his pillow.
(What does end up surprising her is the not-so-subtle disappearance of her medical texts from the lab shelves seven months later. And the amounts of scientific jargon crammed in his notebooks when she deigns to glance. Apparently he took her claims as a challenge. She surmised that with nothing else to do, he threw himself into his studies. But really, seven months? She's not quite sure whether to be impressed or terrified.)
He's remarkable, damn near impressive, covering that much material in such a short span of time. Granted, she forces him to undergo tests before she's convinced he really understands the material, and won't let him touch a test tube until he gets a perfect score, but he gets a sixty the first try. Seventy-three the second. Eighty-nine the third. The fourth time he receives a ninety-eight, until he points out the error she made in the polyethylene chain decomposition. That's the second time in her life she's been left speechless. And the first time she's been tempted to smack someone for being right. But urge to hit aside, she acknowledges her own error, and hands over a lab coat. Now if he'd just wipe that smug smirk off his face...
At least she's the only one with knowledge of the password keys. He might be smart, but there's no chance of him decoding any data until she gives the okay. She smirks when he breaks a flask. He might have the knowledge, but he's still got a long way to go.
**********************************
One year after his family's demise, she wakes up in the middle of the night. There's no rhyme or reason to her alertness, no thunder or gunshot to pierce the silence. Nothing out of the ordinary. Well, except for Mitsuhiko sleeping against the side of her bed. There's a baseball bat across his lap. Peculiar. She says the first thing that comes to mind. "What are you doing with a baseball bat in my room?" He starts, and swings the bat in a wide arc. It nearly connects with her head. Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he notices her ducking posture and the bat in his hands. Sheepishly, he hides it behind his back. A picture of innocence if ever there was one. Right.
Ticked now, she repeats her question. Along with a few other choice words. He looks at the floor and mumbles. She can't make out what he's saying. She asks him to repeat himself. It's only a slightly louder mumbling. Fed up, she throws off the covers and marches over, forcing him to look into her eyes. He's blushing. "Why are you in here Mitsuhiko-kun?"
He's squirming to get away, but she won't release his gaze. She won't let him go without an answer. In tones of great embarrassment, he tells her the truth. A bad dream. A nightmare. The men that had killed his family had come here, were coming to hurt her. To kill her. The same way they killed his sister. He couldn't let that happen. Not to her. Not again.
Oh.
That's understandable. (And somewhere in the back of her mind, she tacks on the words endearing and sweet.)
...but did he really have to try to take her head off? His blush darkens in the wan moonlight. He mutters that she wasn't supposed to wake up. She shakes her head and tells him to go to sleep. She walks over to her bed and once in, finds him sitting up against the side. He refuses to look at her as she raises an eyebrow, but the knuckles against the bat grow taut. That doesn't go unnoticed. The nightmare must have really shaken him. She could order him out, but she doubts he'd get any sleep. And she remembers all too well her nightmares about Akemi. About the Organization finding her, finding them, taking her away in a sickening scarlet spray. How she'd spend those nights in her lab, looking over data, recounting all the methods she'd employed to keep those bastards at bay. If standing guard at her bed helps him cope, she could endure it for the night. She rolls onto her side under the covers and wishes him goodnight. A sigh of relief and pleasant dreams greets her ears as she closes her eyes. Sleep beckons and she is not one to refuse her embrace.
Her dreams that night are filled with many things: cuckoo clocks, green jello, a talking octopus, and a knight in Kamen Yaiba pajamas. Waking up, she finds one of her dreams sprawled across her floor. Not really much of a knight, but at least she got the pajamas right. She walks out of the room chuckling. He walks out of the room ten minutes later with a crick in the neck.
************************************
Time passes, life moves on. Kudo keeps trying to kill himself (not intentionally, but just by being his nosy self), Agasa attempts to blow up the house again, Ayumi and Genta continue to accept detective cases for the Shounen Tantei, she keeps working on a cure. Funny how some things never change. Funnier still how some things do.
She's still working on a cure, but now there's Mitsuhiko at her side. She's constantly amazed at how fast he's taken to everything. The first time they discussed mitochondrial synapses at the dinner table, Agasa dropped his chopsticks. Kudo's reaction was priceless. How she wishes she'd had a camera. Progress is still tediously slow, but that's not nearly as depressing. Mitsuhiko has a way of keeping her spirits up. And his insight into ligand binding as a possible means of inhibiting transfer opened up a plethora of fresh speculations. She hadn't considered that avenue. He's just what she needs. Someone that really understands what she's doing, what she's looking for, how that might be accomplished. Watching him run a full-spectrum analysis, she's immensely glad he's here. She shudders to think what might have occurred if the Organization had realized his full potential.
Mitsuhiko's changed. Some changes, like the growth spurt that sends him staggering at thirty-two centimeters over her head and the increased appetite, are expected. Considered normal. The intellect, the introverted tendencies, the almost instinctive ducking for cover at the sound of company, are most certainly not. He's not who he would have become. The Black Organization has seen to that. She's seen to that. Perhaps if he'd never met her things would have turned out differently. She can't know, but the what-if lingers in her mind. He's a whole new person. Yet if she pays attention, there's enough of the old Mitsuhiko lurking around to ease her guilt. It's certainly the cheek of the old Mitsuhiko that asks she drop the -kun. And it's his dogged persistence during the next two months that finally wears her down from -san to -kun to plain old Ai. To say Kudo's astonished by these changes is an understatement.
**************************
And speaking of changes...
Kudo ended up spilling his secret to the Mouri girl. He wouldn't tell her how, but from the blush that extended all the way to his ears, and the squeak his voice became when he shouted "No!," it had to be good. Mitsuhiko suggested with a devious glint in his eyes that they might consider spiking Conan's tea one afternoon with some sodium pentothal. It's at that point when she realized he'd been spending too much time around her. He was starting to take on some of her more questionable characteristics. That didn't stop her from agreeing though.
And yes, the doping was worth it. He he.
**************************
And now they're gone. Those bastards in black are finally gone. She still wakes up waiting for someone to say "April Fools!" and let her know she was only dreaming, but they never do. It's almost impossible to believe. A lot of people are in the same boat. Kudo, Mitsuhiko, Hattori, Kaitou Kid – they all think it's too good to be true. But like Kudo says, there is only one truth. And Gin, Vodka, Vermouth and about a hundred others trapped behind bars awaiting trial, is one very nice truth. It's over. It's Over.
Nothing left to do but go on with our lives. Which for some, mean coming out of hiding after two and a half years. Watching Mitsuhiko walk beside her, raven hair glinting in the morning light, she thinks it's about time. No boy should be forced to hide away, to be constantly looking over his shoulder at the shadows lurking in the corners of his eyes. To see him arch his face into the sunlight, putting aside the burden on his shoulders, tension easing from his frame is the best reward she could conceive.
Belatedly, she realizes Kudo fits into the same situation, but it's not as much of a relief. He, they, are only halfway out of the pit. Mitsuhiko doesn't have a ten year hurdle to contend with. But two and a half years might as well be ten when one has been trapped in the dark. Taking down the Organization was the easy part. It's the going on with the rest of our lives part that's the challenge. At least he won't be going through it alone.
He's reintroduced to his classmates. Ayumi and Genta are speechless...for about five seconds. Then they pounce upon Mitsuhiko like Kudo on a murder case, and he's trapped in a game of 200 Questions. Where's he been? Wasn't he dead? Why didn't he call? What happened? The sensei has to pry them off the shell-shocked boy. He must not have been expecting the Spanish Inquisition. He really should have known better.
He's quiet during class, almost shy. Not acting at all like the Mitsuhiko she knows. Before she can determine why during the break, the Terrible Two drag him off for questioning. She leaves him to them – she wants no part in the interrogation. Those two in cahoots are scary. It's only for twenty-five minutes. He'll survive. She picks up a book to read.
At the end of the break, he's marched in between the two, white as a ghost, body wound tight as a spring. His eyes meet hers, silently screaming for help. She sends him back a shark's grin and returns to her novel. If she notices a glare directed at her head for the rest of the school day, she feigns ignorance.
Walking home is a different matter. Once Ayumi and Genta finally break for their own homes, complaining about all the homework they've been given, the tenseness begins to leave his shoulders. He lets out a sigh, but doesn't say a word. She knows it's been a rough day for him and lets him have his silence. At least until she notices his brooding brow. A brooding Mitsuhiko is never a good sign. She asks what's wrong. He looks into her eyes, and she's surprised by the sorrow in his gaze. He lets out one more sigh and speaks.
"It's not the same. Nothing's the same. I'm not who they think I am. The Mitsuhiko Tsuburaya who used to run around, looking for mysteries, playing in the park. The boy who wanted nothing more than to see the latest Kamen Yaiba movie. They aren't who I remember. The two friends whom I knew better than myself. They're friends, but they're strangers too. I don't know them anymore. They don't know me. They know the old me, but not this me. The person I am now is so much different from who I was. I'm not him, and I don't know how to get him back. And I don't think I'd take him back if I could. Do you understand Ai?"
She thinks she does. Some things, once lost, can never be regained. And only by enduring great trials can one reach greater heights. You have to fall before you can fly. They walk on in silence till he flashes her a mischievous smile. "Though on the plus side, school has never been easier. How do you fight the boredom? Calculate the molarity of isopropanol?" They have to stop so she can remember how to breathe through her laughter.
****************************************
It's six months to the day since the assault on the Black Organization. Six months since the nightmare ended. She's not quite sure if this is a dream or a nightmare. In front of her is the culmination of three years work. Three years of late nights, close calls, experiments and failures. Three years spent trying to correct her misdeeds. And here it is, lying helplessly in her palm. A small white and blue pill, about the size of a Tic-Tac. The cure. She can't decide whether to laugh or cry.
She calls Kudo the next day. Tells him the good news. He's ecstatic, racing to Agasa's while hammering her for the details. Is she sure? She's pretty positive. All the research she and Mitsuhiko have gathered over the past three years says yes. That's good enough for him. He swallows the pill. Thirty minutes later one high school detective from the past - but he's a high school detective no more, is he? - is resurrected, and the mantle of Edogawa Conan is finally laid to rest. He thanks her, twirls her around in his glee, apologizes for the spinning, and races off to his love. A week, a month, a year, ten years later he's still Shinichi, so the cure is concluded effective. Not that it takes her that long to pop the pill herself.
A fortnight. Fourteen days spent agonizing whether or not to return to her true self. Return to Miyano Shiho, biochemist, twenty-one, adult. Owner of a driver's license, a doctorate from John Hopkins in biochemistry, an apartment in Nagoya, a Swiss bank account with more money than she could spend in ten lifetimes. No more boring elementary school, no more coddling adults, no more not being taken seriously for her age. She could be herself without fear. Haibara Ai was always afraid, always looking over her shoulder. Never Miyano Shiho.
But being a child is not all bad. She's never had experiences like these, been treated to laughter and games, had friends to pass the time. She'd rather forget her real childhood and supplant these images in their stead. But she's already been a child, knows far too much to ever truly blend in to her persona. It was always a sad fit. She's tired of pretending, and thinks it time to end the façade. Even if the façade contains all her hopes and dreams in one gangly polite intelligent package. But she's far too old for fairytales, and stopped believing in them a long time ago.
She tells Agasa of her decision two days later. He's sad, but he understands. She has to look towards the future, and come to terms with her past. She's the granddaughter he's always wanted, and while he might want to keep her with him, he knows how much she needs to spread her wings and fly away. He asks when she will be leaving - she replies in one week's time. He wishes her luck, and wonders if she wants a farewell party. She says no. She doesn't want to burden anyone with her departure. It's best if she fades into obscurity. Will she tell Mitsuhiko? She stays silent, and refuses to look into the Professor's eyes. She hears him sigh, and tell her she can make her own decisions. With a nod, she walks away.
She knows she won't tell Mitsuhiko. She can't. She doesn't have the courage. If she tries, she knows she'll waver in her determination. He affects her too much. He can raise her with his smile, he can doom her with his frown. If he asked her to stay, she doesn't think she'd have the heart to say no. To try would kill her.
What she doesn't know, however, is the presence of a third person behind the kitchen door, are the ears that catch every soul-shattering word. The identity of the heart of a boy that breaks in a million pieces. She'll never know the amount of tears Mitsuhiko sheds that night crying himself to sleep.
*****************************
The last week is a bittersweet disaster. She puts her affairs in order, plans for her journey, and tries to conceal her departure from one wonderful boy. He, in turn, adopts a façade of indifference, trying to hide his upset at her decision and wonder where he went wrong, what he did to make her leave. They tiptoe around each other in that last week, faces frozen in happy rigor, neither yielding their masks, pretending the world is not falling apart. It doesn't fool anyone.
*****************************
She takes the cure. It's pain and suffering and ten thousand kinds of hell, death, damnation, and resurrection in a scant thirty minutes. The pain lasts a lifetime, yet not nearly long enough. She stares at her hands, the long elegant fingers, the rounded fingertips, the faint scar above her left thumb from a lab accident when she was thirteen. The hands she used to know but are strangers to her now. Much like the rest of her body. She tells herself she'll get used to it. It's only a matter of time. Something she now lacks ten years of. Ha ha.
Now, she reasons, it's time to say goodbye. She's found the cure, restored Kudo, regained herself, there's no reason to stay any longer, though a voice in the back of her mind - or is it her heart? - cries out the name of one remarkable little boy. She pushes the crier away. It's for the best – for him? for her?– she refuses to say. Refuses to dwell on what cannot be changed.
It's easy enough to say goodbye to the Professor. For a man who's acted as guardian, protector, provider, confidante, colleague, father and friend, the words come quickly to her lips. She'll never be able to repay this man, this kind-hearted individual who gave her the means to start again when all hope seemed lost. But she knows he'll never ask for repayment. Perhaps it is payment enough to see her standing in front of him, alive and going out into the world once more without fear, tears trickling from her eyes as she hugs him in farewell. He wishes her well, and reminds her to come back and visit anytime, the door is always open. She thinks she will.
But saying goodbye to Mitsuhiko…that aches with all the pain of a thousand steely knives, stabbing straight through her core, relentlessly without end. Over the past three years, they had become close, Mitsuhiko and her. She could honestly say that no one knew her like Mitsuhiko; not Kudo, not Agasa. Not even her sister Akemi had been able to read her like he could. For how late he came into the equation, he was able to understand her thoughts, her reactions, her emotions so well it was almost scary. Perhaps she was scared. There was so much they shared, so many conversations, moments both meaningless and poignant, that if she didn't leave now, cut the connection, she would never be able to let go. He was too close, too damn close, and if she stayed, she would ruin him. He deserved better.
She never meant to fall for him. It was sick, it was Wrong; it was disturbing on so many levels. She was an adult - she was ten years his senior for kami-sama's sake! - and he was merely a child. But you were once a child, her traitorous heart countered, you could be again. The pill's right there… He was tempting, too tempting. The apple ripe for the picking that once bitten, would cast the two of them away from this artificial paradise. She couldn't do it. Not to Mitsuhiko.
She opens the door to his room. The knobs twist easily in her sweat-drenched hands. Her feet carry her over the mantle. It's dark, but not dark enough. He's not there. She turns to leave, but finds the door sliding shut with a man's hand on the doorknob. An unfamiliar man's hand, connected to an unfamiliar arm and a body swamped in shadows. He steps towards her, and the pale light from between the window blinds illuminates his figure. Features she knows, knew, as well as her own have been stretched, matured…aged. He towers over her once again, inches separating their heights, but this height is not longer around counter-level. She finds her eyes drawn to his, tries to look away, fears what she'll see, what he'll see, but to no avail. His haunting gaze pierces through her, mind, body, and soul. She's trapped, lost forever in his eyes.
A word, words, millions of words clamor to escape her. Thoughts and questions race through her mind, whiz past at lightning speeds. She doesn't know what to say. She knows exactly what to say. One word. Why. A plethora of questions encapsulated in one sound, one breath, one puff of air.
He pulls her into his arms, a slight blush marring his handsome cheeks - who knew he would turn out so stunning?- and in a voice both strange and familiar whispers into her hair, her ear, her very soul, "I lost everything once. Don't make me go through that a second time." She tenses in his arms that refuse to let her go, that hold on to her like there's nothing left. She can feel him trembling. She can feel herself trembling. "Don't leave me," he pleads.
She doesn't know what to say, what to think. He's too close; his voice is knocking down the walls, refusing to let her intentions proceed as he holds her wavering will in his arms. She can feel herself falling. She knows she shouldn't, that this will be the end of everything, but she can't say no. She never could, not to him.
Her heart answers his entreaties as it has always desired. "I'm right here. I'll always be right here." She kisses his cheek, a sisterly token of affection, but to her means so much more. He understands. She knew he would. Smiling, he releases his hold on her and grabs for his own suitcase by the door. She considers calling him presumptuous if it wasn't for his hand shaking in her own. He is just as terrified, as elated as she. Neither of them knows what will happen next. "I'm not letting you go." A promise. His. That's perfectly fine with her.
Together they walk out the door.
...I wrote fluff? I wrote fluff! Woohoo! Let's all rejoice, shall we?
And to forestall any confusion: Yes, Mitsuhiko did take the cure. Yes, he aged ten years. Yes, this would not make sense to anyone with an appreciation for chemistry or biology. But let us just pretend that since the APTX 4869 takes ten years away, the cure would add ten years and not go into the mitochondrial specifics. In short: APTX 4869 = -10 years; cure = +10 years; and you don't need to have swallowed the apotoxin to be affected by the cure. Got it? Good.
Now I'll just go off and amuse myself with the thought of Shinichi and Artemis Fowl dueling it out as waterbenders until Holly and Ran the firebender come in to stop the madness. I've been re-reading the Artemis Fowl books lately, and my dreams tend to twirl that with a helping of ATLA, DC, POW camps, and Batman Beyond. It's best not to ask.